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1952, 1956, 1959  

This years corrispond to crucial phases in Pinna's life. After a brief experience as a cameraman, the 1952 marks his beginning in the field of photojournalism. He founded the "cooperativa"  Fotografi Associati with Plinio De Martiis, Caio Mario Garrubba, Nicola Sansone e Pablo Volta, first nucleus of the so called "scuola romana", a small group of keen reporters. He was very involved with the activities of Communist Party and made his first reportages for the militant reviews  ("Paese Sera", "Vie Nuove", "Noi Donne"). During that period he became friendly with Franco Cagnetta, pioneer in the field of anthropological studies  and scientific photography. Trough Cagnetta, Franco Pinna met Ernesto De Martino, a well known italian anthropologist. Together with Vittoria De Palma, the musicologist Diego Carpitella and the art critic Marcello Venturoli they started an important ethno-anthropological mission in the italian southern region of Lucania.

In the spring of 1956 Pinna  followed Cagnetta in his intense anthropological reportage about the social condition in the roman borgate 
To this expedition took part even Alberto Moravia, Giovanni Berlinguer, Piero Della Seta, Elsa Morante, Goffredo Parise and Pier Paolo Pasolini. the political events of that years (XX Congress of the  Soviet Communist Party, the invasion of Hungary), caused Pinna's departure from the italian Communist Party; besides Cagnetta changed his scientific interests so, for all these reasons the expedition was suspended (to be concluded few yers later by Berlinguer e Della Seta). 
In august Pinna had the opportunity to take part of a second anthropological research in Lucania with the same team of the preceding travel (with the only exclusion of Venturoli).
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In the 1959, following De Martino expeditions, Pinna made his most mature reportages: the Tarantate of the Salento and The game of the Scythe about the religious rituals among the farmers population in Lucania. In the same year Pinna published his first photobook: La Sila, with the result of a photographic work more free and expressive, liberated by De Martino's rigorous anthropological approach. The issue of Sardegna. Una civiltà di pietra (Sardinia. A stone civilization) in the 1961, the second Pinna's photobook, marks the end of his professional relation with Ernesto De Martino.
 
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